Watch: Football stars back Urdd’s climate emergency Centenary Peace Message

Football stars have joined the largest youth organisation in Wales in urging business leaders and governments across the world not to ignore the climate emergency.

Gareth Bale and Aaron Ramsey are among the players who have appeared in a short video supporting the Urdd Gobaith Cymru’s (The Welsh League of Youth) annual peace and goodwill message.

This year’s message is focused on the environment and calls on those in power to take urgent action to protect the planet, saying: “It’s time to wake up.”

The students from Aberystwyth University who wrote the message and Wales’s First Minister Mark Drakeford will present it at the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo, Norway, on Wednesday.

Mr Drakeford said: “The Nobel Peace Centre is the ideal location for the Urdd to share the centenary peace message with the world.

“At a time when the peace of the world is in such peril, the message and work of the Urdd in welcoming refugees to Wales have never been more significant.

“The theme of the climate emergency, too, will resonate with young people from around the globe as we work together to protect the fragile planet which we inhabit together.”

A peace and goodwill message has been delivered every year for the last century by the young people of Wales, with 2022 being the charity’s centenary year.

Wales is the only country in the world that has produced such a message for a hundred years.

The first message was shared using Morse code, followed by the BBC World Service, and now it is most widely shared on social media.

Last year’s message was the most successful to date, having been translated into 65 languages and viewed in 59 countries, reaching more than 84 million people worldwide, with US politician Hillary Clinton among the notable names to express their support for it on Twitter.

This year it is available in 100 languages, and with promotion by Bale, Ramsey and a number of other well-known faces from the Football Association of Wales’s first female and male teams it is hoped the message will spread even further.

Mae’n amser deffro. ⏰

Mae pobl ifanc Cymru yn galw ar bawb ar draws y byd i beidio gohirio’r agenda #ArgyfwngHinsawdd.

We can’t ignore the #ClimateEmergency. It’s time to wake up and take action.

🌍 #Heddwch100
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 https://t.co/K33gJakHEV pic.twitter.com/KmZSa0b5uF

— Urdd Gobaith Cymru (@Urdd) May 18, 2022

Sian Lewis, the Urdd’s chief executive, said: “As an organisation, we have a duty to the next generation to use this platform to amplify their voices, because giving a voice to the young people of Wales is at the core of everything the Urdd does.”

Alongside the message, the Urdd has committed to reducing its carbon footprint and has created a net zero plan with a target of achieving net zero by 2050.

It has also opened its first environmental residential centre for young people in north Pembrokeshire.

To offset the footprint created by the students travelling to Norway, the Urdd and Aberystwyth University have donated to its carbon capturing and storing woodland protection plan.

‘Overconsumption’

Here is the Urdd Centenary Peace Message on the climate emergency created by students of Aberystwyth University for the organisation’s centenary year and delivered to the Nobel Peace Centre on Wednesday:

THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY

The clock is ticking

And our world is on fire.

It’s time to wake up.

Floods, fires, starvation, and poverty,

this is our reality.

Migration, conflict, displacement,

is this what our future holds?

Why are we still listening

to the blah, blah, blah of those in power?

Why do we still believe

that we can buy our way out?

It’s time to wake up.

It’s time to make a change.

We can’t carry on like this.

We have the privilege of choice,

to slow down, to lessen our use,

to think.

To stop overconsumption.

Because we won’t be the first to suffer.

And so here’s our promise

to change the way we live

and to call for a systemic change

for the sake of those in the Global South.

For the sake of a future.

We’ll begin with ourselves

by making small changes

And putting pressure on corporations and politicians

to make the big changes.

This is our promise.

What’s yours?

It’s time to wake up.